Who Hems Anymore? Cuff Your Denim This Fall and Never Look Back

When Vogue.com Market Assistant Elizabeth Taufield walked into the office last week, there was a collective neck-crane amongst her colleagues: No one could quite identify her skinny jeans. Were they hand-patchworked? Was this a new seam-method from Tokyo? A vintage pair scooped up from a foreign flea market? Not quite. These were regular old skinnies, save for the fact that her cuffs were pulled up to new heights, right below the knee. In an annoying, all-too-common problem, Taufield’s jeans were too long—the product of a collaboration with the famously leggy Karlie Kloss for Frame Denim. “They were so incredibly long on me—and the hem extended way past where my foot ended,” says Taufield, who loved the light-wash jeans for their slashed knees and otherwise perfect fit: “I’m nearly five foot ten, and there was still so much extra fabric.” While seasons past would have found her trotting out to the nearest denim tailor, the newly chic solution? Apply an over-the-top fold to jeans made for a six-foot-one supermodel for a fitted—and double take–worthy—result, no hemming needed.

Taufield isn’t the only extreme-cuffer at Vogue.com. At just shy of six feet tall, Vogue.com Market Editor Kelly Connor prefers to roll her selvedge 3×1 jeans rather than permanently alter them, while others in the office are making the exaggerated cuff permanent on their own terms. Vogue.com Fashion News Writer Steff Yotka, who is five foot four, added a personalized stick-and-sew finish to her cuffed jeans. “I bought these wide-leg jeans from Zara that were too long on me,” says Yotka. “I was planning to have them hemmed but then I cuffed and stitched them around the edges. And in the end, they looked cooler that way.”

Labels are also catching onto the un-tailoring trick. MM6 Maison Margiela tacks on a distressed flared or tiered cuff to loose pieces, while MiH has a thick, shin-skimming cuff to its pairs. As for Marques ‘ Almeida, its signature fringe seam remixes a cuff that hits just below the knee of high-water boyfriend jeans. But whatever skyscraper hem you choose, store-bought or DIY, take note: This season, the key to the perfect fitting jeans is no longer a trip to the seamstress, but rather a simple roll of the wrist.